Steve Ballmer (and the RIAA, MPAA and AFAA) are watching you

[ShneekeyTheLost]

The article does not mention PCs but lots of products, like cash registers, arcade games, etc use a modified Windows kernel under the hood. Manufacturers have free, open source alternatives but none that are truly Microsoft compatible. ReactOS gets ridiculed for still being in the alpha stage after so long but the work they've done with such limited resources and personnel is amazing (and completely legal). Imagine if it gains more support and emerges as a viable alternative. Aside from us saving money on computers, hardware makers that need an OS would be freed from Microsoft's licensing fees. It would then become much harder for the **AA Content Mafias to impose their whims without one corporation dominating the market to work through.

Nopes. Congress will enact a requirement that a.ything capable of playing materials with DRM has to contain this tech.

Or, conversely, MPAA & RIAA will require allsuch material to be keyed to this.

(Note, this is a worst-case scenario, which i would give no better than a one-in-three chance, if that ... But if the*AAs get behind it solidly, it could happen.)

And when no one buys it? Companies go bankrupt, alternatives are found, and the world moves on.

[Dave]

Or, conversely, MPAA & RIAA will require allsuch material to be keyed to this.

(Note, this is a worst-case scenario, which i would give no better than a one-in-three chance, if that ... But if the *AAs get behind it solidly, it could happen.)

And when no one buys it? Companies go bankrupt, alternatives are found, and the world moves on.

Consider how well DivX worked out in the market... perishable, self-destructing DVDs that were intended to be sold at low cost, as a sort of return-free limited time rental.

Another example - the "copycode notch". The RIAA (I think) proposed "notching out" a narrow band of frequencies in commercially distributed music, and requiring that cassette and DAT and CD recorders detect the notching and refuse to record notched music. Turns out that people hated the idea, in part because the notching process was audible on many types of music and in part because "false positives" could disable the recorders when they were being used quite legally. Congress didn't bite.

Sony tried hard to make their audio CDs incompatible woth computer CD-ROM drives, so that they couldn't be "ripped". A bright young lad disabled their tricky new technological idea with a Sharpie marker. Sony retreats in embarrassment.

[Fairportfan]

Another example - the "copycode notch". The RIAA (I think) proposed "notching out" a narrow band of frequencies in commercially distributed music, and requiring that cassette and DAT and CD recorders detect the notching and refuse to record notched music. Turns out that people hated the idea, in part because the notching process was audible on many types of music and in part because "false positives" could disable the recorders when they were being used quite legally. Congress didn't bite.

Yeah. But (A) Congress was not yet a wholly-owned subsidiary of Big Business and (B) it didn't work so better and messed up (some) music

Sony tried hard to make their audio CDs incompatible woth computer CD-ROM drives, so that they couldn't be "ripped". A bright young lad disabled their tricky new technological idea with a Sharpie marker. Sony retreats in embarrassment.

Actually, they were not made incompatible with computer drives - but they contained software that would (the first time you put on in your drive)try to install a player that would prevent copying.

And it was even easier to beat than that - if you knew what you were doing and had auto-play disabled - just hit the "ESC" key and it would skip the install.

Unfortunately, given that the MPAA and RIAA have already implemented a standard for HDMI content that all hardware capable of playing HD content must meet (they're not, i understand, doing much with it, as yet, but they could, already, stop you from playing HD content on unapproved equipment), which applies to computers, BluRay players, DVD players and TVs, you might find yourself unable to use DRMed content tomorrow or the next day..

Take a look at the "copyright protection" legislation Congress has already passed (or, in very limited cases,tried to pass, until people noticed)

Check out the DMCA - it's already illegal to defeat DRM. And has been since 1998.

Take a look at SOPA.

It's already illegal to "jailbreak" an iPad - or, probably, root a Nook Color (as i have). It is also illegal to unlock a mobile phone with permission from your carrier.

Under such circumstance, the carrier who detects a jailbroken tablet or un authorised unlocked smartphone would be within their rights to brick your device.

[Dave]

Sony tried hard to make their audio CDs incompatible woth computer CD-ROM drives, so that they couldn't be "ripped". A bright young lad disabled their tricky new technological idea with a Sharpie marker. Sony retreats in embarrassment.

Actually, they were not made incompatible with computer drives - but they contained software that would (the first time you put on in your drive)try to install a player that would prevent copying.

And it was even easier to beat than that - if you knew what you were doing and had auto-play disabled - just hit the "ESC" key and it would skip the install..

Actually, they tried more than once.

The time I was alluding to, was the time that they figured out the trick of manufacturing their audio CDs so that they appeared to be "multisession" enhanced CDs. These have a first session consisting of the usual Red Book audio tracks, and a second session consisting of a computer CD-ROM filesystem. Red Book audio CD players don't understand multisession discs - they don't even know how to look for a second session, and completely ignore its presence. Modern CD-ROM drives are multisession-aware, and they look out beyond the end of the audio disc for the header for the second session.

What Sony did, was to manufacture discs that said they were multisession, but had a deliberately-corrupt second-session header. Audio CD players weren't bothered, but multisession CD-ROM drives read the header and got stuck in a loop trying to interpret its inconsistencies. They usually got stuck so badly that they wouldn't even eject the disc if you pushed the drawer-open button - you had to use the "paperclip in the eject hole" to get the disc out.

This trick would (if it worked right) have blocked all multisession CD-ROM drives from recognizing and ripping the discs - it was *more* than an "autorun" hack to block Windows. It would have worked equally well against any OS, as it was actually making the disc incompatible with the drives... the OS would never even see that the disc had been inserted, as the drive firmware was locked up.

The bright young man I alluded to, figured out that simply covering the multisession data with a marker caused the drives to abandon the search before reading the "poisoned" header. Problem solved, Sony embarrassed.

Sony did try at least one other sneaky trick to block ripping, which involved having their "autorun" software (what you alluded to) actually patch Microsoft Windows... and they used some techniques which let the patch avoid detection by commercial antivirus software! In effect, they installed a "root kit" on Windows systems, without permission by the owner, and this could have been exploited by virus/malware writers. Caused them no end of grief when it was discovered and publicized.

I haven't bought any Sony products for some years now, as my small way of protesting their business tactics.